Tough Conditions,
Meet a Tougher DMI.

When it comes to weather and its effect on golf course conditions, the Mid-Atlantic region can be as unforgiving as they come — from drastic temperature swings to unpredictable fluctuations between cool, damp conditions and hot, dry ones. To be a course superintendent in this environment takes patience, calculation and powerful tools to help get the job done. Eric Materkowski is the Golf Course Superintendent at St. Clair Country Club in the South Hills area of Pittsburgh, so the challenges of this region are what he’s tasked with overcoming on a daily basis.

St. Clair Country Club features two courses, an 18-hole course called the Championship Course, and a 9-hole course called the Terrace Course. It’s a large amount of acreage with at least 25 to 26 thousand rounds of golf played on it each year. That level of play means there are high expectations for beauty and performance.

“It’s Pittsburgh, so our climate is all over the place,” said Eric. “It’s been very wet the last few years, and we’ve had a tremendous amount of rain. It’s a difficult environment for the turf to grow in, but we still have to work to meet the performance expectations of our golfers.”

Eric and the St. Clair team work hard to create the best possible growing environment. “We try to implement good cultural practices, good fertility and fungicide programs. We’ve had a lot of tools that work okay, but we haven’t had great success recently,” said Eric. That was until they got their hands on Maxtima fungicide.

“We went to two of our worst greens, the 8th and 12th, with a long history of chronic anthracnose,” said Eric. The St. Clair team sprayed those areas in the heat of the summer in dry, hot conditions and it didn’t take long to see if their efforts were successful. “The Maxtima fungicide worked. The results we were getting in some of these areas that had previously been uncontrollable were obvious,” said Eric.

Not yet satisfied, Eric and his team tested Maxtima fungicide in their nursery. “We went to our nursery green that is a Poa green and sprayed to see what kind of damage we could get. We didn’t see any damage,” said Eric. “It was incredible. It shocked me.” By the end of the summer, the St. Clair team was using Maxtima fungicide on all of their greens and approaches so they could enter the winter months with the course as healthy as possible.

Maxtima fungicide is a cutting-edge DMI that can safely and affordably be sprayed on any turf, at any temperature, subject, of course, to any label restrictions, anywhere on the course to help ensure disease-free playing conditions all year long. At St. Clair, the results on the course back that up. “If I spray the entire surface of our Championship course with any product, I’m a believer,” said Eric.